Tangible Feelings

EEG (en biofeedback) voor de kunsten: Tentoonstelling en Concert

Christophe De Boeck: StaalhemelInteractive installation

Staalhemel ('steel sky') is an interactive installation with 80 steel segments suspended over the visitor's head as he walks through the space. Tiny hammers tap rhythmical patterns on the steel plates, activated by the brainwaves of the visitor who wears a portable EEG scanner.

This responsive environment confronts the viewer with an acoustic representation of the electrical brain activities that governs his being at that very moment. All our mental and physiological processes are controlled by myriads of transitory circuits in an invisible, obscure place in the crown of our head. That intimate topography is mirrored in this sky of steel as hammers hit the plates in shifting rhythms and combinations, transforming parts of your consciousness into macroscopic dimensions. This environment offers a walk through a sheltered space that is also the space of one's own mind.

At iMAL, Christophe will present a reduced version of his "steel sky", made of 24 steel plates providing a glimpse of this impressive installation.

Kiel Long: The static organ

The Static Organ project investigates advanced scientific methods in order to confront viewers and participants with aesthetic experiences that question embodied human perception, exploration and interaction within the environment that surrounds them. It is composed of Mind Pool and Mind Drops.

Mind Pool (2011)Interactive installation

The interactive installation piece entitled Mind Pool is a physical feedback of the activity of brainwaves presented to the participant in real time.

This representation of activity is presented to the user through a liquid that responds in a varying motion of interacting wave patterns. This generates a unique symbiotic sculpture constantly flowing and changing as thought itself.

This interaction provides an experience that is an externalisation of the workings of the brain allowing the user to engage as both a performer and observer, exploring the relationship between their mind and body in a dynamic physical and sonic environment.

Mind Drops (2010)Video installation

The video installation, entitled Mind Drops, consists of three dynamic audiovisual projections that surround the viewers and invites them to an immersive experience. These motion images and generative sounds attempt to represent the activity of a person through a new perspective by audio-visualising their mental activity.

The videos are generated from data gathered from brain activity of the artist through EEG sensors whilst enacting Sleeping, Feeding and Meditating. Whereas these actions activate a broad variety of mental qualities, Mind Drops attempts to display them with a minimalistic aesthetic in order to produce accessibility with a great importance to subtle transformations over time. The visitors are invited to observe and live these ‘rituals’ through inwardness.

Montage Cinema Revived by the EMO-Synth is a new interactive multimedia project where the emotional impact of automatically generated sound and image is maximized using artificial intelligence techniques.

At the very heart of the technology used in the project lies the EMO-Synth, a soft and hardware system in which the emotional man-machine interaction plays a central role. During operation, the EMO-Synth automatically generates and manipulates sounds and images to direct the user in certain predefined emotional states. The development of the EMO-Synth relies on different techniques stemming from a broad range of artistic and scientific domains including artificial intelligence, affective computing, psychophysiology, advanced mathematical modeling and algorithmic music composition and image generation.

For the performance of Montage Cinema Revived by the EMO-Synth at iMAL, Valery Vermeulen invites selected participants* to have their emotional feedbacks recorded while listening to a pre-defined music. The resulting data are then used to produce a sound composition that will be played live by musicians and controlled together with live visuals by the same recorded person placed in front of the audience. The live audio-visual concert resulting from this experience intends to be unique and entirely based on the personal emotional feedback of the participant.

This project is in collaboration with various artists from different backgrounds including Joris Blanckaert (music composition), Remco Roes (image & video) and Stefaan Smagghe (violin).